The 30th Battle or The Tea Party (Waiting for You)
by Zinfandelli
Summary: Jack turns a mistake into a party! Sort of...he kind f'd this one up, but he's trying to do the right thing and apologize! Jack, your apologies suck. Also, you may be getting in way deeper than planned. Pitch doesn't mind though, in fact, he doesn't even have the frame of mind to object! You're just taking advantage of this aren't you?
1. Chapter 1

The first thing he knew was smell. It smelled. It was a pleasant smell...Only half pleasant. There was singed hair, burning wood, an aromatic flowery sweet fragrance. The perfume stuck to his tongue and was gently accompanied by something deliciously crisp and fresh, something that made him crave more. Something that worried about his well-being.

That snapped his eyes open.

It took a moment to come to consciousness. He blinked and heard a low rumbling groan. It was himself. Pain accompanied the recognition and he groaned again, louder. It sounded muddy. His eyes refused to focus so he lifted a hand to his face. Pressing at his eyelids his fingers then moved up to his forehead and stopped. They came away dark. He could focus on that, though. They were dark with nearly dried blood.

"Woah! Hey! Take it easy."

That voice. Pitch found he was halfway out of bed sitting up before a point of cold pressed against his shoulder and forced him back into the fluff. He glanced over to find the source of the chill and stared at Jack like he couldn't quite comprehend the situation. Really he couldn't. His head was pounding like a stampede raged through it and Jack Frost was hovering over him, shirtless, emitting sweet little concerned fears like incense.

With a deep inhale while closing his eyes again, he took in the fear and savored it. What a novelty it was. Fear. Fear for him…

"Pitch, are you ok?" Jack's voice came through a bit clearer, the fog was slowly dissipating.

"Uh?" His own voice was more of a croak, and it seemed that his tongue didn't want to work just yet.

"Holy shit, did I smack you so hard you have amnesia?!" Jack bounced from foot to foot and Pitch couldn't keep up.

The pounding in his skull shattered his thoughts as soon as he tried to collect them. That point of annoying light that was Jack moved too fast to keep up. He groaned again and covered his eyes with a palm to block out the annoyances even just a bit. It didn't help. Jack had tangented rather magnificently and flopped down on the edge of his bed practically vibrating with excitement. He completely ignored Pitch's weak protest and sallied forth into his own fantasy.

"Okay, okay, so your name is Pitch Black and you are the Nightmare King but you know how that sounds all evil and stuff? It is! But like YOU aren't, so instead of doing it the easy way, you are actually a Guardian of Childhood like I am and we've been like super close friends for centuries protecting children with fear and having tons –"

"Jack."

"—Of fun! We are such great friends that we spar and duel all the time just for kicks and Sandy, that's the Sandman, thinks it rather immature but we both know how much fun and important training and fighting is so we just ignore him most—"

"Jack. Shut up."

"—of the time. You aren't super great friends with the other guardians but that's only because you're a bit of a mischief-maker, like me again, and they are all so stiff and uptight and such a bore to be around that you much prefer my company because we get each other and I am such a super great friend that—"

"JACK SHUT UP!"

The kid practically fell off the bed from the startle. Pitch wished he would have. The small lick of fear in no way made up for the piercing pain raising his voice had caused. He groaned again and rolled to his side away from Jack, wanting to curl up and fall back to oblivion.

"Sorry?"

He responded with an incoherent grumble.

"Come again?"

Jack really wasn't going to leave him alone now was he? Pitch rolled back over and shot him the weakest glare he had ever managed in his life. Jack grinned right back at him.

"What are you doing here?" he managed with barely any voice.

"Taking care of you!" The boy was way too pleased with himself.

"I do not need taking care of." And to try and prove the point Pitch made to sit up. He somehow got himself upright but was almost immediately falling back over with dizziness and light-headed nausea. Cold hands caught his shoulders before he toppled backwards, however, and he was steadied in their grip. He leaned forwards bowing his head to breathe through the spinning sickness.

"I beg to differ." Jack's voice moved as he spoke. He was beside Pitch and his hands left his shoulders to swing Pitch's legs out of bed. He didn't protest at all, he couldn't, not when he felt like he would empty his stomach into his lap at the moment. Soon enough he was sitting on the edge of his bed his elbows on his knees and his head gingerly between his palms.

A small, deep, and amorphous trepidation soothed at his lips. Jack was hesitant with something. Pitch's mind wouldn't let him decipher it at the moment, it was complex. He was about to turn and question it, maybe coax it into something stronger, something more able to sate him when Jack let out a soft frustrated huff behind him and gently placed his fingers at his temples. Stiffening from the contact he found he had no energy to lift his head from his own palms to protest.

"Easy." Jack tried to sooth from behind. Pitch could tell how tense he was, too, he could taste his uncertainty. "Just think of them like small wiggly ice packs."

"You are insufferable," Pitch grumbled, but he still moved his own hands to support his head by his chin, giving Jack more of his forehead to touch. He pressed his fingertips into his eyes and let his own tension seep out of him as cold thumbs rubbed back into his hairline.

"So you don't have amnesia then?"

"No, Jack. As much 'fun' as trying to make me believe I am a Guardian may be for you…"

"Yeah." He cut Pitch off as his fingers slowly inched in tenderly cooling away his headache. "But wouldn't it have been nice?" He sounded wistful "…Friends for a millennia…"

Pitch didn't answer.

The ensuing silence was uncomfortable. He had long ago quashed those idle thoughts of what could have been. It hurt to think about now. What might have happened if there was even a single other being to ground him?

The quiet presented Pitch with the small purposefully ignored fears that accompanied Jack's own thoughts. He tried to concentrate on them, but found it difficult. Something about…touch? Enemies, the Guardians, and company-

Fingers found his wound and he flinched forgetting his train of thought in the sudden sting.

"Sorry. The blood is drying. I think you're healing underneath though. Feeling better yet?"

He made a sound that neither confirmed nor denied it.

"Right. So! No amnesia then! That's good! I was worried when I knocked you out cold. Good thing we were so high up that I could catch you. I thought you'd dodge an iceball better than that though." Jack tripped on unfazed and Pitch quietly marveled how Jack could talk at him so easily, so comfortably, when just moments before he was letting himself spiral away. He needed to revisit those thoughts later.

"You…hit me with an iceball?"

"You don't remember?" Jack's voice had an irritating note of hope in it.

"I-no. No I do not." He dug his fingers into his eye sockets a little harder in frustration. His skull was knitting back together even as he sat there but the headache was persistent. He probably had a concussion. Perfect.

"Cool! How far back do you remember then?"

"Uh…" Pitch rubbed at his eyes until colors blossomed from the pressure trying to remember, to even think. "We were at a thawing river?"

"Yeah, a fight on the ice floes. It was awesome. You have any details?"

"Mmmm. Your turn to pick. No clouds, no moon, no humans. You were trying bombs?"

"Uh-huh! Anything else?"

"No."

"Seriously!" Jack's fingers ran back through his scalp and scritched playfully in his hair. "Well obviously, I won."

The tense little fear that preceded Jack's boldness melted away as he became comfortable with his hands, like he was afraid he would be attacked for touching. Was that it? A fear not unfounded, Pitch thought, as he finally started to bring his mind back together. He sighed out his next word, "Obviously."

"Okay!" Jack eagerly fell into recounting the fight. "So, the fight was pretty awesome, you arrived first and said I was late before trying to chop my head off with that ridiculous scythe of yours. We stayed on the ground for a bit, you really liked how the ice rocked under your feet, and you kept trying to drown me!"

Pitch huffed a laugh and moved his fingers from his eyes to cup his cheeks instead. "Did it scare you?"

"Hell yeah!" Jack tugged on Pitch's hair and forced his head back, out of his own hands, to look up at Jack's face. "You are an ass," he said with a grin.

Stunned, Pitch's mouth hung open before Jack tipped his head back down for him to once again rest in his palms. He gaped for a moment letting his mind catch up to that. It was jarring how candid Jack was sometimes. And he had admitted his fear with a smile on his face. A smile…towards his own trauma. From what Pitch could remember of the incident he succeeded in getting Jack to panic. He couldn't figure what happened next though, the terror was so potent it encompassed his limited memory.

Lifting one hand from his chin, Pitch wrapped his fingers out in front of him around an invisible neck. "Oh."

"You remember that part then? Typical." Jack quipped as he let go of Pitch's skull and crawled to sit beside him on the edge of the bed.

"I remember your horror as I punched your head through the ice." He marveled as he dropped his hand and leaned his head into his other palm to look over at Jack, a sweet little smile curving his lips.

"Then, what did I do next?"

"No idea." The memory of the fear that shattered Jack's mind just like the ice beneath them overpowered the headache for a moment. Pitch hummed in appreciation, a little sad that he couldn't recall every detail. He took his time to savor what he could and his eyes fell shut. "It was so good." He could get lost in that memory. Even more so because Jack was right there, alive, healthy, and not broken under the weight of his own sacrifice. He was here and it was ok.

Knowing a person's greatest fear, tasting its essence and depth, wasn't always pleasant. Sometimes it was like subsisting on porridge, nourishing but not delicious. Phobias and constant nervousness grew stale even if they were reliable, unexpected scares and surprising terrors were hard to come by, but squashed and forgotten horror that was dug up and refound? That was the best. It was a sort of deep-rooted fear, often mutated out of proportion, that was crippling in its reminders but not debilitating in its breadth. Those were the fears that spurred action, thought, a need for something to happen. Those were the fears that bred courage.

Jack oozed those fears. His very nature sustained them. What better way to overcome something scary than by making it fun? What better way to lessen a trauma than by playing a game? And what better game than one that was a bit scary? The sprite was a veritable feast of the stuff, and if he had no other redeeming qualities than this, Pitch would still be-

His head nearly smacked into his knee as his hand was shoved out from under his chin.

Pitch reflexively swiped his arm out to hit Jack in retaliation but the kid ducked and the momentum pulled him back to the bed, flopping down into the sheets with a groan. Too fast. He moved too fast, and his head swam.

"What the hell was that for, you brat?" Pitch moaned, annoyed.

"You were falling asleep."

"No I was not."

"Coulda fooled me."

"Get out and let me rest." Pitch rolled over to his side again in a vain hope that if he couldn't see Jack he might actually disappear. The thought had him smiling to himself.

"No can do! You probably have a concussion so I'm doing you the extremely generous service of keeping you awake till you're better."

Pitch groaned and pulled a pillow over his head. "I'm not a human, Jack. Please just go away." He swore if he were in any shape to kick him out, Jack would have already been long gone.

Instead, the pillow was pried from his grip and Jack was leaning over him already lifting him back up to a sitting position. He allowed it, blaming the concussion for his lack of protest.

"Don't be like that. You know it'll hurt less faster if you do things the right way, so just humor me for a bit." Jack said as he climbed off the bed then held out both hands looking down at Pitch with his brows raised in a soft sort of imploring smile.

That was a dangerous new weapon, Pitch decided as he used Jack's hands to help him stand. Once steady on his feet, Jack let go and skipped over to the hearth where a fire that was all embers glowed. Pitch in turn stood there for moment watching, having to squint from the brightness. Jack's skin glowed like its own light he was so pale...and shirtless. He was...what? The coals lit his bare torso, and as Jack shifted around the light he was brought back to the fact that he rarely lit a fire in his room, so Jack must have done it, but how? Well, all the necessary materials were kept stocked just in case so obviously he used them, but for what purpose would Jack start a fire that could be harmful him?

"Don't just stand there, come have a seat!" Jack was almost vibrating with enthusiasm again.

Shuffling over, Pitch sat carefully in one of the two dark leather wingbacks that sat on either side of a stone coffee table. A matching couch sat between them, facing the fireplace that was carved right out of the black stone of the walls with a black mantle framing it that looked as if dripping stalactites created the archway over eons.

Jack, meanwhile, had wrapped something dark around his hands to pick up the copper kettle that was resting near the grate. He brought it over and poured steaming tea into two waiting cups on the coffee table before setting the kettle down and pushing one of the cups over towards Pitch with his hands still wrapped.

Pitch just stared.

"What?" Jack asked, removing the makeshift oven mit.

"What are you doing?"

"Tea party!"


	2. Chapter 2

Rolling his eyes, Pitch huffed a small annoyed sound but still went and picked up the cup. A small toothy grin appeared as he sniffed the tea, finally making sense of what he first smelled when he woke.

"You burnt yourself."

Jack laughed and sprawled himself out of the couch, throwing the black fabric, his hoodie Pitch noted, over the back of it. He then lifted his bangs to show singed and curled eyebrows and hair no longer white underneath.

"Yup. I'm fine though, so don't worry your pretty little head over it. I know how you like to fuss." He joked as he put his hands behind his head for a pillow, stretching out full length on the couch.

"And the tea is bitter." Pitch wouldn't give him the satisfaction of acknowledging that last statement.

"That's your fault."

"How is your lack of skill my fault?"

"You were the one who had a three hour cat nap."

Pitch hummed a response as he sipped. It was over steeped but still drinkable, could do with some sugar. That thought in mind, Pitch concentrated for a second reaching through his shadows to his pantry to retrieve the sugar bowl. His injury made the trick clumsier and the dish clattered out of the gathered gloom onto the coffee table. Sighing, he leaned forward to pull it towards him, which was embarrassing, not being able to control his element for something so simple. Regardless, he sweetened his tea.

"Put some in mine too."

"No. You are hyper active enough as it is."

"I'm not a child."

"Coulda fooled me." Pitch shot back with a grin.

It was Jack's turn to be annoyed, finally, and he sat up to put sugar into his own teacup. Pitch smiled as he sat back. Jack retaliated by pouring over half of the sugar into his cup and mixing it with his finger.

Rolling his eyes at the gesture, Pitch turned away watching the glowing coals instead, refusing to fuel Jack's incessant chatter with conversation and actually thankful for the quiet reprieve.

A silence that didn't last long.

"I should invite Sandy to tea next time."

Good lord. Would it kill him to shut up just for a moment?

"Or I should drag you to the pole for tea with everyone else!"

Pitch balked. Now, Jack was blatantly trying to provoke him. Brat.

"Maybe throw the annual post-Christmas party here instead of at-"

"Will you shut up!" Pitch had to consciously relax his grip on the cup or it would shatter.

"So no party then? I think the cages would look lovely in garland"

"Jack Frost, so help me-!"

"You'll what? Kill me? You haven't succeeded in that yet. I'd know."

"I'll give you nightmares for a century!"

"That's a terrible threat, your nightmares practically follow me around globe already."

He paused. That was news.

"Do they now?" Pitch asked, sipping at his cup and leaving it at his lips processing this new information.

"You should know."

"No, actually." Pitch set his teacup down back into its saucer and glanced at Jack, who raised his eyebrows a bit surprised. "If you paid any attention ever you'd notice how they turned on me so easily on Easter. I created them, gave them form and function, and they attacked me. You must have noticed how independent they have become."

"What does that even mean?" Jack leaned forward, excitement brimming in his eyes, like this was some secret information.

"It means that I spent months after Easter fighting them off and re-subjugating them after their mutiny. That there are still renegades loose in the world and that they have developed from mere embodiments of nightmares into actual entities capable of thinking and reproducing for themselves."

Jack's mouth fell open and he sprung to his feet. "That's awful! Something needs to be done, they need to be stopped!"

Pitch laughed and sat back into his chair and Jack glared at him.

"Calm down."

Jack scoffed.

"Before you jump into righteous Guardian mode and fly off to be the hero, there isn't really much you can do. Sanderson and those children corrupted over two-thirds of my army back then and the rest fled or turned on me directly. There might be a handful of usurpers left and really all they ended up doing is the same thing that mine do without being directly told. "

"But I've seen them! They follow me and I have nightmares and I see new ones born from dreams!" Jack looked alarmed. This was doing miracles for Pitch's mood.

"Then, they must have it in for you, eh?" He said with a shark-like grin.

"Not funny Pitch!"

"Are they attacking you?" He never gave them any orders of the like, but it was possible they picked up on Pitch's own desires taking cues from their duels and tentative relationship.

Jack paused and looked at the fire for a minute before turning back. "Well…not usually. But they do sometimes! They try and bite me and chase me through the sky!"

"Jack, I think they're playing with you." Pitch replied, and as soon as the words left his mouth his smile fell. Playing? With the Guardian of Fun? He'd have to have some words with them later…

"Playing? Seriously? But they're nightmares!"

"I don't see why you are so affronted. Aren't you the Guardian of Playing? This should be right up your alley."

At that, Jack finally laid back into the couch, his brow knitting in thought. Pitch let him process the information because he needed a moment as well. It wasn't a bad turn of events. Unexpected, and a bit alarming, but not terrible. It took a good few centuries to bring the mares to consciousness and by the time the plan was enacted they were barely able to follow orders without constant supervision. Exposing them to outside influence like awake children and Guardians must have seriously changed them. Changed them enough to feel their own fear.

Pitch smiled, Jack helped him to figure out the mystery of why they turned on him so quickly. They were afraid. They were frightened for their own existence and frightened that they were quickly cornered into an environment that lacked fear totally as Pitch was ground into the snow by golden sand. Then, the remaining fled or latched onto the only fear left, his own. He rubbed at the bridge of his nose, smoothing down the thoughts. His head felt years better with the tea and sitting upright, the wound should be all healed, just the concussion to worry about now.

"I can work with this." Jack finally piped up again.

"Please don't." Pitch responded with a withering sigh.

"No, it will be great! Maybe I can ride one, or teach them tricks! Maybe I can get them to make custom nightmares or something…"

"They will become thoroughly useless, you mean."

Jack was about to keep going but Pitch somehow successfully silenced him by holding up his hand. "Jack, honestly, this is news to me and I don't yet know what will come of it. As it stands, the Nightmares have human life spans as they are tied very closely to human imagination. They have only recently begun to act completely of their own accord, and this 'playing' is against their created purpose so who knows if one will survive being thrust into a situation devoid of fear."

Jack sat up again hopping to a squat on the couch grinning wildly.

"You forget, oh Nightmare King!" He crowed, "That I also deal in fear! Take a chill pill. You are overthinking the whole thing. Let the horsies have a little fun, maybe they won't turn on you so fast if you're nicer to 'em!"

"They didn't turn on me because I am mean!" Pitch spat.

Jack laughed. "I guess you're right. I've only ever seen you spoil them rotten."

"Rotten is better than anything you are planning…" Pitch murmured as he relaxed further back into the cushions of his chair.

After a moment of silence where Jack downed the last of his wet sugar, Pitch lifted his hand to gently touch at the wound in his hairline. He scratched at it and winced as blood flaked away revealing the tender healing skin beneath. Sighing, he felt the scarred over cut where the jagged edges of the ice dug in and how it trailed back into his hair. Jack got him good, there was still an inflamed lump on his skull. Just great.

More minutes passed as the pair lapsed into a tentative silence that sat just on the right side of comfortable, but still a bit nervous. If he weren't so preoccupied with his own thoughts and the nagging pain in his skull, Pitch would have noticed how this was basically the first time the pair of them were together without fighting. No verbal argument or physical altercation. Their banter fell away to companionable quiet and neither made a motion to move or disrupt the strange situation.

The quiet emotion that signalled Jack's constant presence began to fall away. The strangeness of it jerked Pitch back to alertness and he glanced over to see the Guardian dozing on the couch. He was sprawled out ridiculously, one leg over the back, one on the armrest, one arm under his head as a pillow, and the other laid across his exposed stomach, lazily scratching. His breathing was deep and slow, relaxed. Pitch marvelled for a moment, the rise and fall of his abdomen on display without the hoodie and leather sheath hiding it, the low firelight casting sharp shadows across his muscles. He looked starved. The frailty of his human life forever preserved in immortality. But such strength was hidden in those wiry limbs, such a potent soul inside jutting ribs. Jack Frost was so much beyond the physical cage of his body, greater than the very endlessness of his magic…

Burning golden eyes blinked to life underneath the couch. A puff of black sand erupted from a snuffling nicker as the searching nose of a nightmare fit impossibly under the furniture tried to find it's prey. Pitch watched it for a moment as the thing tried to ungracefully slither in the form of a horse out from the couch.

"Jack."

"Mmmm?" He replied blearily, not bothering to wake back up.

"You shouldn't fall asleep here."

"Nnnnwhy not?" Jack cracked an eye open glancing over to Pitch.

"Because you'll have nightmares, of course." Pitch grinned lightly.

"You'll keep'm away formmme, yeah?" Jack closed his eyes again.

"No I'll make them worse."

"Rude. I thought we were friends."

"The Guardian of fun will deprive me of such fine entertainment simply because it's at his expense? I thought we were friends."

Jack frowned and opened both eyes. "Upstanding Boogeymen wouldn't force nightmares on their friends, you know."

"Friends wouldn't tempt them with a perfect opportunity," But Pitch still dismissed the mare silently lurking beneath Jack, who was still completely unaware.

"I'm boooored though! This is boring I can't help falling asleep!" Jack groaned. "Let's do something?"

"I have a concussion."

"Right."

"I'm not holding you here, you know. In fact, please leave."

And at that, Jack huffed out a frustrated groan as he rolled himself off the couch to his hands and knees to stand. "Ok, yeah. I'm gonna go this is boring now, just-" He stepped over to Pitch in his chair and quickly leaned over him, bringing his hands up to his face and then hesitating.

Pitch stiffened instantly where he sat, shifting up straighter, his mouth falling open at Jack's sudden intrusion of his personal space. Jack's fear licked at him from such proximity, and his head was finally clear enough to register that the hesitation sprang from the irrational, but certainly hard to shake, fear that his hand would pass right through. Jack cycled past that in a mere second with a bit of reason, but his brow furrowed slightly. He shifted expertly to something harder to place, and Jack's own confusion translated as something like a nervousness to touch at all, as if the contact would be harmful or hurt- oh. Well, no, this certainly wasn't a punch. The moment had Jack realizing that this was far from combative, that he was being downright intimate. Again. He was being intimate again, and it clicked in Pitch's mind that this was what caused his hesitation an hour or so ago when he soothed away the headache.

A gritting of teeth and a slightly exaggerated huff forced Jack to close the distance between fingers and scalp as he gently pressed around the lump his iceball caused. He chipped a bit of blood off himself and Pitch flinched underneath, words quite lost from the gesture and the fear.

"It looks weeks better already…" Jack said quietly. He moved his hands down Pitch's face and lifted his chin so Pitch was made to look him in the eye.

He couldn't hold Jack's gaze though and diverted, finding a sudden well of embarrassment, until Jack's other hand came up and pulled his eyelids open.

This seemed to finally jolt Pitch back into some form of sanity and he promptly rolled his eyes, "Are you quite finished?" annoyance dripping from his words.

"Yeah I guess so. Your eyes are still a bit blown...so yeah…" Jack mumbled as he let go and stepped back, bumping into the coffee table awkwardly. "Ah, well...Yeah. You're pretty ok, then?"

"The headache will go away, yes."

"Th-then, I'll just...see myself out." Jack finished lamely as he spun over to the couch to retrieve his hoodie and sheath that had fallen on the floor. Pitch just watched, mildly stunned, as Jack fumbled putting the jacket back on, momentarily defeated by the zipper. Jack's face flushed a deeper blue the more time ticked by and Pitch swore he heard a curse when the straps of the sheathe tangled around Jack's neck. After another blessed minute Jack hurried over to the door of Pitch's bedroom where his staff rested against the frame.

"Uh...See you next month." And Jack disappeared into the dark hallway.


End file.
